List of tallest buildings in Miami

The U.S. city of Miami, Florida has the third tallest skyline in the US with over 300 high-rises, 70 of which stand taller than 400 feet (120 m), mainly according to Emporis,SkyscraperPage, and The Skyscraper Center, which is the online database of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The tallest building in the city is the 64-story Four Seasons Hotel & Tower, which rises 789 feet (240 m) in Miami's Brickell district and was completed in 2003. It also stands as the tallest building in the state of Florida. Eight of the ten tallest buildings in Florida are located in Miami.

Background

History

Miami's history of high-rises began with the 1912 completion of the six–story Burdine's Department Store, although the Freedom Tower, built in 1925, is Miami's best-known early skyscraper and remains an icon of the city. From the mid-1990s through the late 2000s, Miami went through the largest building boom in the city's history. In what was dubbed a "Manhattanization wave", there were nearly 60 structures proposed, approved or under construction in the city that were planned to rise over 492 feet (150 m) in height. As a result of the construction boom, only two of the city's 25 tallest buildings were completed before the year 2000, and the city has one of largest skylines in the United States, generally ranking only behind New York and Chicago. The boom, however, ended abruptly around 2008 when the real estate market crashed and the late-2000s recession began. By 2011 the market began to return, with new condominium projects such as Brickell House announced for construction beginning in 2012. This was followed by a second boom that is currently active As of January 2015. This second boom has more proposed towers for the region than were built in the first boom from 2003 to 2010.

Miami

Miami (/maɪˈæmi/; Spanish pronunciation: [maiˈami]) is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County. The 44th-most populated city proper in the United States, with a population of 417,650, it is the principal, central, and most populous city of the Miami metropolitan area, and the most populous metropolis in the Southeastern United States after Washington, D.C. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Miami's metro area is the eighth-most populous and fourth-largest urban area in the United States, with a population of around 5.5 million.

Miami is a major center, and a leader in finance, commerce, culture, media, entertainment, the arts, and international trade. In 2012, Miami was classified as an Alpha−World City in the World Cities Study Group's inventory. In 2010, Miami ranked seventh in the United States in terms of finance, commerce, culture, entertainment, fashion, education, and other sectors. It ranked 33rd among global cities. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets, and city-wide recycling programs. According to a 2009 UBS study of 73 world cities, Miami was ranked as the richest city in the United States, and the world's fifth-richest city in terms of purchasing power. Miami is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", is the second largest U.S. city with a Spanish-speaking majority, and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality.

Greater Downtown Miami

Downtown Miami is an urban residential neighborhood, which is based around the Central Business District of Miami, Miami-Dade County, and South Florida in the United States. Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard are the main north-south roads, and Flagler Street is the main east-west road. The neighborhood is defined by the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) as the 3.8-square-mile (9.8 km²)-area east of Interstate 95 between the Rickenbacker Causeway to the south and Julia Tuttle Causeway to the north.

Locally known as Downtown, the area is a cultural, financial, and commercial center of South Florida, tracing its present-day history back to the 19th century. In recent years, Downtown Miami has grown and physically expanded to become the fastest-growing area in Miami, with large scale high-rise construction and rapid population increase. Greater Downtown is home to many major museums, parks, education centers, banks, company headquarters, courthouses, government offices, theaters, shops and many of the oldest buildings in the city.

Skyline

A skyline is the horizon created by a city's overall structure, or by human intervention in a non-urban setting or in nature. City skylines serve as a kind of fingerprint as no two skylines are alike. For this reason, news and sports programs, television shows, and movies often display the skyline of a city to set a location. The term The Sky Line of New York City was first introduced in 1896, when it was the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the color supplement of the New York Journal.

Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, has called a skyline "a physical representation [of a city's] facts of life ... a potential work of art ... its collective vista."

History

Early examples

The Colosseum in Rome

The Colosseum in Rome

Gizah pyramids

Gizah pyramids

Acropolis

Acropolis

Stonehenge's skyline has been known for millennia.

Stonehenge's skyline has been known for millennia.

Historic buildings in Toledo, Spain have been part of the city skyline for many years.

South Florida

South Florida is a region of the U.S. state of Florida, it comprises the southernmost part of the state. It is one of Florida's three most common "directional" regions, the others being Central Florida and North Florida. It includes the populous Miami metropolitan area, the Florida Keys, and other localities. South Florida is the only part of the continental United States with a tropical climate.

Area

As with all vernacular regions, South Florida has no official boundaries or status, and is defined differently by different sources. A 2007 study of Florida's regions by Ary Lamme and Raymond K. Oldakowski found that Floridians surveyed identified "South Florida" as comprising the southernmost sections of peninsular Florida. This area includes the Miami metropolitan area (generally defined as Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties), the Florida Keys, and the interior region known as the Glades. Additionally, South West Florida, representing the state's southern Gulf Coast, has emerged as a directional vernacular region. Some respondents from as far northwest as the southern Tampa Bay area identified their region as being in South Florida rather than South West or Central Florida.